Training the Brain for Bigger Heart: The Neurobiology of Sacred Relationship

As many long-time readers know, I’ve cut back on regularly writing, editing and posting creative work to this blog. I’ve cut back for many reasons; mostly because I thought 520 continuous weeks of posting was disciplined enough. Another reason was because I didn’t constantly have topics I was passionate enough to write about on demand every week. I know that inspiration favors the disciplined, but I also know that it favors other ways of creatively operating as well. But the main reason I stopped regularly writing, editing and posting, was because for the last year I’ve been tele-mentoring people in “The Neurobiology of Sacred Relationship” (see below). After 10 years, blogging had turned into a half-love for me, and thus the time had come for it to be at least partially forsaken. My increasing interest in the brain’s role in Sacred Relationship made it clear that it was time to change things up.

Ordo Amoring Whole-Loves

Forsake is an interesting word. It means to give up or renounce something formerly held dear. When we skillfully do so, we aspire to something better.

A Recent Enchanted Prayer Pod

Often, though, there is no guarantee that something better will be the result of our renunciation. I may have to actually work at, or be open to such a possibility. Not only that, but having to make hard choices between what I love and what I love most (“Ordering our Loves” according to St. Augustine) can at times be absolutely excruciating. Such is sometimes the nature of Sacred Work or Sacred Relationship.

Last year, I posted here about my difficulty in giving up house-building. I’ve had a Sacred Relationship with it for more than two decades. While I could no longer build 6000 square foot mansions for high-tech billionaires, I could still build small pods for a single homeless person to sleep in. But even that’s become challenging, especially during the cold, rainy Pacific Northwest winters. My most recent effort: A 6 square foot memorial Little Free Library for a local charity. Old housebuilders never die, we simply reduce our square footage.

Sacred People Relationships

Obviously, we can form special, Sacred Relationships with more than just work. Sacred Relationships with other people is the recent area I’ve been creatively exploring. What might be the nature of a Sacred Relationship between two or more people? One thing brain science might tell us is … it’s probably going to be idiosyncratic and unique to the people involved, given the complicated nature of our brains and bodies filled with complex neural matrices and network effects we can’t even begin to imagine. At the same time, a Sacred Relationship is very likely to be profoundly influenced by many of the same factors that affect brain development: genetic ancestry, pre- and perinatal health, stress and nutrition, cultural heritage, past and present environmental influences,Adverse Childhood Experiences, the national and international political environment, spiritual direction … the list of potential influences is a long one. Ignorance of which sadly contributes to the fact that:

41 percent of first marriages end in divorce.

60 percent of second marriages end in divorce.

73 percent of third marriages end in divorce.

Clearly, Sacred Relationships take work to make and keep sacred. But what sort of work? And how much? Heinz Kohut, the founder of Self-Psychology, once remarked, “The secret to a good marriage is having only one person go crazy at a time.” If I was to echo Kohut with a positive slant, it would be: “One secret to a Sacred Relationship is mastering emotional self-regulation strategies.” Often easier said than done, of course, since few of us have been taught such strategies and the better you get at them the greater the challenges for amping up your mastery are likely to become! Here is a recent example of a violation of the sacred. Sacred is hard.

Healing Relationship Crucible

Relational Learning

Be that as it may, there are things we can learn and small, incremental changes we can make. Simply knowing and understanding how the biology of hyper-arousal feels in our body can make a difference. So can understanding the often reciprocal, dovetailing differences between one person’s brain and an other’s. And then there’s the expansive, creative possibilities that emerge when we frame our primary relationships as a crucible within which “healing’s always trying to happen.”

Over the past year I’ve put together a series of four interactive online “explorinars,” during which time I’ve been mindfully person-testing them. I’m now ready to make time for three (3) people to investigate The Neurobiology of Sacred Relationships with me at 7AM Pacific time on Sunday mornings. If this offering might be of interest and you’d like to know more, feel free to check out the above link or email me: floweringbrain@gmail.com